i am from Puerto Rico i like coding, game development and creating my stuff ie. websites :D. i decided to join the contest because i am using joomla for a website i am creating and wanted it to be as good as possible also because i always wanted to help a open source project but never found anything suitable or easy enough that i could accomplish till now.

GHOP has been a great experience i have met equally minded people that share same interest like open source project and have a great talent. i thing a lot of things worked perfectly but maybe more programming task a litle bit more time maybe one more month and stuff that can be included on joomla releases maybe a new module or something similar.

I race bicycles and spend a lot of my free time training. Other than cycling, the most important thing in my life is learning. Some of my other interests include messing around in Linux, trying to become fluent in at least one programming language, and making things, but, like with programming and electronics, I am not very good at it yet. I also play piano. My favorite class in school this year is Chemistry AP, because it is probably the first class I've ever taken that really challenges me. Math is usually my favorite class, but I don't like my teacher this year.

Why I joined the contest and why I chose Joomla!

I wanted the tshirt, so that I can pretend that I am good at something. The money isn't too bad either. But really, I wanted to join GHOP, because I find it very rewarding to be able to give back to the open source community. I use open source software every day and it means a lot to me to be able to contribute. I chose Joomla!, because I wanted to learn more about it.

Some thoughts on my experience

It was great. I got a lot of good feedback and help. Everyone who helped was serious about getting me to do the best job possible.

I like spend my time making websites, programming (but a don't have a good level yet), help open source projects. I also like playing tennis, playing the guitar and learn many thing (I'm curious).

I have chosen Joomla! because I have heard of this CMS by a member of my LUG some years ago, I also tried it once and I wanted to take a look at its new versions, I think it's a great CMS.

My experience in GHOP is very good. I made some translation last month, the installation manual. It was very interresting, I have learned things about Joomla! and some Apache, PHP tips. Thanks to my mentor (infograf), I also have learned things about French, English and translations.

Now, I'm doing a website, I can't say objectively what I have already learned and what I'll learn. I think that the organization of the GHOP is very well done for Joomla!, It's good to have a list of various tasks and to be followed like that. I'm not really attracted by money (but I think the travel in USA could be nice :P), so I didn't a lot of little tasks, I prefer well done bigger tasks. I really like contributing to the community and I hope I'll be able to still contribute to Joomla! (depending on my free time and my studies) after the contest.

In the future, keep up this great job! :D Maybe it would be nice if Google could give more time for this contest and could also help other projects.

(The Forum ID is the same as the name, People with problems using the 'ä' might use the Name 'Haettasch' or better simply 'Ben' for calling me instead.)

I'm a 17 years old student in the 12th grade and come from Germany. I love working with computers, including programming software but also doing things in the web. I've got an own homepage for my projects and care for some other pages, one of them will be running Joomla! 1.5 in future, as soon as it works on the server of my hoster ;-). This is the page of the school magazin in wich I take part, but I'm also crazy in going dancing (standard dance) two or more times a week.

I spend a lot of time surfing through the net and reading newspages and feeds. By doing this I read about the contest. I thought it would be great to take part, so I read the rules and decided to choose Joomla! because I "played" a little bit with Joomla! 1.0 a few time ago and had to build up a new webpage now. Because I wanted to do this with Joomla! at this time and assumed that I would have to learn about programming extensions for Joomla! for realising the project, to reach my personal expections of the page, I thought why not learn this by doing and take part in the Contest, chosing Joomla!.

The Contest was great. I learned al lot about free software development: About how much work is to do, how the controll and help process in the community works and a lot about Joomla! to. It inspired me to keep on helping the Joomla! community after the end of the contest. I'm going to keep on developing extensions for Joomla! and maybe take part in one team - wich one I don't know at this time - in the future and I hope that Google will re-run this contest next year.

I am 15 years old and am currently studying at St. Gabriel's Secondary School. I'm a Singaporean of Indian ethnicity. English is my first language and I study Mandarin in school as a second language.

I have two major afflictions that begin with “R”. The first is Reading and the second is Rhinitis.

I enjoy reading Science Fiction novels from authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and Stephen R. Donaldson. I am currently revisiting a classic dystopian sci-fi novel - “1984” by George Orwell.

My other affliction, Rhinitis has been both a boon and a bane. The allergy “attacks” have kept me indoors (bane). This has allowed me to explore the Internet as source of entertainment and information. This spawned my interest in web development (boon).

In 2007, I was appointed the President of my School's Infocomm Club (an amalgamation of the AVA and Web Clubs).

I spearheaded the migration of my School's website from a static HMTL webpage to one powered by an open-source content management system – Joomla!

Beyond the above, I enjoy visiting other countries. It gives me the chance to learn about other cultures and, their food!

Why I joined the contest and why I chose Joomla.

This contest provides an opportunity for me to learn,interact and contribute to the open-source community.

Joomla was my choice because I had already gained some experience working with it and I wanted to help contribute to its development.

Some thoughts on my experience in the GHOP.

It is wonderful to see forum members and other contestants helping each other on various tasks – Its truly exciting!

Ideas on how we might make this better in the future.

The contest has been amazing thus far. Questions have been met with quick responses on the forums and help is always there if I need it. I can undertake the tasks at my own pace, within the overall time-limit.

Perhaps an IRC Channel could be set up to allow for real-time communication. As for further ideas, I'd like to give it more thought before getting back to you.

I have a strong interest in I.T. which has lead me to spend lots of my time using computers and hence learn about them. I have done bits a pieces in a wide variety of areas but most notable, Visual Basic .NET and now my adventures in Joomla! Besides computers, I enjoy reading, and am particularly keen on J. R. R. Tolkien novels as well as Frederick Forsythe.

About Me:

I am just about to begin University, completing a Bachelor of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne.

Why I decided to join the contest and why I choose Joomla!:

I decided to join to competition for the most part because I had just begun my holidays for a number of months and was looking for a project to keep me busy. The GHOP contest has sure done that but has been a great deal of fun as well. I choose Joomla! because I haves used Joomla! before for websites and saw this as a way to get better involved in the community atmosphere.

Some thoughts on my experience in GHOP:

GHOP has been heaps of fun! It has been a really great chance to meet people from the community and also give something back to the community. It also brought about a heightened realisation of how much work the Joomla! team puts into the software.

Ideas on how to make it better in the future:

My experiences were completely positive! If the competition went this well again, it would be a huge success.

Hi, I'm Justo G. de Rivera, 17 years old, from Madrid, Spain. My name in the joomla forum is justo.derivera. I learnt programming a few years ago, and I use to code for fun and experimentation. When I saw the GHOP Contest I thought it could be really fun, and that there would be some great programming challenges. I decided to join Joomla! because PHP is my favourite language and because I loved the tasks. It has been very fun by now, and I learnt a lot about developing, PHP, and Joomla!. The advisers were very helpful and understanding, and provided very useful feedback and great ideas. Thanks for this opportunity to join to the Open Source!

I'm from the USA - Denver, Colorado... and I love it. I've had an interest in computers since the Myst series entered in our home. My love for technology has stemmed from that experience. I started working with website for fun when I was 11, and haven't looked back since. Discovering Mambo back four years ago was my introduction into PHP and I started learning the joys of working with it. After seeing Joomla! appear, I was taken with the core team's plans, and jumped over here. I spent a few years with zoom gallery before it's demise, and a few with Joomla!hacks working on their bridge for SMF. Now, I do the occasional Joomla! contract project for corePHP but not much.

Seeing GHOP was like a dream come true - finally a way JUST for high school students to contribute to this amazing project. Being able to work with Joomla! and contribute small things that will make a difference in the project has been a great experience, and one that I have really enjoyed. The volunteer staff was great - especially Amy who got me through all of my tasks and helped me when I got stuck plenty of times. I hope I get the chance to participate next year too. If I were to do anything differently, it would be to get more people staffing the event. While I felt well attended too, I had to occasionally bump my own topic to get attention. Other than that - I think it was great! The only concert I have is that if people get too ambitious next year, there won't be a chance for any of us to grab more than one task... haha!

Outside of web coding and Joomla! stuff, I love music - which has resulted in my being able to work with bands in the area (as a web guy of course). I also play guitar, enjoy working with sound systems, and love to hike in the Colorado Rockies. Speaking of the Colorado Rockies... how about that baseball team, eh?

My hobbies are playing the piano, swimming, folk dancing and of course: my computer! Don't like those computer games at all. I like to read and post on forums and to do something with building websites.

I met Marijke (MarijkeS) at a forum of Windows Live Spaces, 1.5 years ago. With 4 others we set up a team making gadgets for Spaces. We completed 7 of them. A new site for the forum was needed, and also space for other applications and information. Marijke already knew something about Joomla!, so it was a easy choice. That's the first time I came in contact with Joomla!. Soon I tried to set up my first Joomla! site, and registered on DutchJoomla.org, the Dutch Joomla! community.

At first I read a lot of post (yeah.. I still do), and then started posting myself and tried to help others. Marijke asked me for translating the 1.5 Help files together with another student. Because they weren't completed at all at that time, the work wasn't completed.

But I was a member of the translation team now, and started translating a few components. I translated JamBook, Phoca Guestbook and after that sh404SEF, of whom I'm a translation partner now. I'm also testing the translations of dutchjoomla for the 1.5 releases and some nightly builds.

The 'newsreporter' of DutchJoomla posted an article about the GHOP project. I was interested, but first thought it was only about the coding. When I looked closely at it, I saw there also were a few translation tasks! I claimed the translation of the Installation Manual and started to work on it. I enjoyed it a lot! After that I claimed another translation task, translating a team blog. Although there were no translation tasks left, I didn't stopped with the work for GHOP, because I liked it! First looked to documentation tasks, but there weren't any left which seems fun to me. Then I saw the unit test plans, and looked to them. I liked it, and so claimed one. And a second one after that. I decided to do some coding work for the next task, but there wasn't any open code task. Then tasks were added about testing unit test plans. Completed one of them and busy with the next one! I'd like it that my work is useful to the official Joomla! 1.5 stable release. And after this?.. Don't know at all! I really like the project, especially all those positive reactions on my work! If there is any task which I would be capable to do, I'll definitely claim it!

How could you make it better in future? Don't know! It's really perfect like this!!! I love it!

Uhm.. only one thing perhaps: include the links to several websites within the task description. I couldn't find the document in the Wiki in the beginning (and actually; didn't look for it as well).

I come from Jindrichuv Hradec (or Jindřichův Hradec with full diacritics) in the Czech republic (not Czechoslovakia - it split in 1993 and nowadays doesn't exist ;) )

I'm just finishing a grammar school in my city and then I want to study on the Charles University - The Faculty for Mathematics and Physics. I'm interested in maths, programming and web coding. Expect of these interests I love music (I try to play guitar and piano) and nature.

Since I was young I've been a scout - and I like it. It is a great life way for me. In the end, I spend some time with my gorgeous girlfriend, but the distance of about 300 km between us doesn't make it easy :) And finally, I like smiling =)

First I read about GHOP incidentally during an IT class. I saw a possibility how to earn some money and good experiences in my favourite activity. And the international certificate looked also very cool =) I searched for some tasks, but I'm not familiar with Linux projects and C. So I searched some PHP tasks... But the most of them was claimed, so I decided for a translation task - after all, I love english. Now I see I don't have enough time for completing 3 tasks, but the experiences from my only one are also very useful. Thanks for a project like this ;)

I learned that the translation to a brilliant language isn't easy. Even after two cycles of translating there reside many forms, that are translated, but sound very strange, in the document. I haven't known Joomla! before, in fact, I wrote some VERY simple CMSs for myself in the past. Joomla! looks like a very advanced one. Maybe I'll use it once in the future.

The only issue that would be done better is the advertisement. I'm interested in IT, but I found GHOP only incidentally.

I love writing music and Free Software. I use GNU/Linux as my desktop OS, and am in the process of getting my school district to use GNU/Linux on some of their computers as well. I am trying to teach myself more advanced PHP/Javascript. To practice, I made BernsteinForPresident.com. It is the website that wants to elect Leonard Bernstein as the president of {insert your home country here}. I made it to teach myself PHP, Javascript, and HTML, but I now use it as a homepage. It would be so much easier and the site would be more powerful if I used Joomla!, but Joomla! makes it too easy. I wouldn't learn anything about scripting languages if I used Joomla! :D

When I heard about this "contest" (why is it called a contest?) on lxer, I joined immediately. I have always wanted to help out the FOSS community on a larger scale than doing a lame PHP script. The first project I looked at was Joomla!. I used Joomla! 1.0.x earlier that year for a student council website, and fell in love with it. I looked down the list until the word "Compose" caught my eye. "I claim[ed] this task" and started my Joomla! journey.

It has been a lot of fun working with Joomla!. The community built around it is amazing. Many of the other FOSS projects I have seen have nothing but a couple people on a -dev mailing list.

I would love to see sub-forums. One for documentation, one for outreach, one for coding, etc.

I am 17 years old. In March I start my last year of school. I am going to study Informatics Science at Cordoba National University (FaMaF). I participate in Programming Olympiads (for more information: www.oia.org.ar - www.usaco.org - www.topcoder.com/tc). I also make web sites. Doing that I met Joomla! because I needed to make a community web site (www.interactianos.com.ar).

I also programing simple applications in PHP to administrate different things.

On the other hand, I play the sax and the flute in school band. I play football and handball in school team. I play chess (some time ago I played for La Rioja team, but now I don´t have enough time to train).

In GHOP I chose Joomla! because it is the CMS I am currently learn to use.

I've had a keen interest in the IT area since a very young age, and have been developing websites since about 7, using XAMPP on my localhost machine.From there I found Joomla, and after learning a little more about it I became very keen in developing sites and would certainly say Joomla is a very big interest of mine now, and hopefully in the future.

Why you decided to join the contest and why you choose Joomla!

I decided to join the contest because I really needed something to kick start my contributions towards Joomla. Whilst I've always been interested in it, I haven't ever really known exactly how everything worked. The reason I chose Joomla! In particular is because not only do I know a lot about it, I found that Joomla have the best community of assistants and overall quality.

Some thoughts on your experience in GHOP

Absolutely wonderful is all I can say. Having an opportunity to get involved in major projects with people there if you need it is very reassuring!

Ideas on how we might make this better in the future.

More promotion possibly, and a faster review system is all I can suggest. And of course, more projects :) I can't believe how many people contributed to this!

I'm 16 years old. I go to high school in second class. I like listening to techno music. I'm interested in computers, web... I would like to be professional web developer, designer or something connected with computers and web.

Why you decided to join the contest and why you choose Joomla!:

It's very useful because in that way I can improve my English and I can also meet a lot of new people with same interests. I choose Joomla! because I think Joomla! is best open source content management system, it has the biggest community, a lot of successful developers and it's easy to use.

Some thoughts on your experience in GHOP:

Very good experience, interesting topics.

Ideas on how we might make this better in the future:

Maybe you could create groups for every international zone board (Joomla community) for making tasks on their own languages.

I live in Lesko, Poland (Bieszczady Mountains, south-east part of country).

I'm 17 years old and I go to General Władysław Anders High School in Lesko. Next year I'm going to pass my Matura exam (A-levels). Moreover, I co-operate with company which is working on ecology (Natural Systems) and Carpathian Heritage Society. I've done for them a few websites.

I've found information about GHOP at Online Informaticians Journal (Dziennik Internautów, http://www.di.com.pl/). GHOP Contest was a great opportunity to increase my knowledge about Open Source. I've chosen Joomla! as the most connected with my specified website development interests software. I tried to build websites based on Joomla earlier, but I didn't know about more advanced features. So I know now that Joomla! is the best way to do the most advanced, light-weighted and professional websites.

GHOP tasks were great. I improved my ability of creating documentation, coding tasks were good chance to discover capabilities of PHP, XML and Joomla!. I really learnt much with GHOP. What is more, Joomla! mentors' and other contestants' help was very professional.

My full name is Ming-Ting Wei, with the nickname called "魏藥" which sounds like stomach medicine in Chinese. "medicalwei" is the ID I chose in Joomla! forum.

I live in Taiwan, and lead a tiring life for the preparation of an college entrance exam.

One of personal interests is do something meaningful with my computer.

Before I claimed the translation task, I only installed Joomla! once and abandoned right away. To feedback on free software communities, I choose a task for me to do despite my parents' disagreement. The translation of an installation document seemed easy for me, and I've tried Joomla! for its simple installation, so I chose a translation task for it.

I have to do this task return home at 10 p.m. and spend a little time to translate one or two paragraphs. To make sure what words used for translation in Joomla!, I have to check the previous installation document translated by Eddy, the leader of JoomlaTaiwan.

Eventually, I finished the task within 2 weeks, and I am waiting for Eddy's confirmation now.

GHOP is a good chance for teenagers to participate in free software communities. Thank you, everyone.

My interests and hobbies include coding and programming primarily, but I also participate in many other extracurricular activities. I take part in my school's speech and debate team; I also play baseball every summer. My proudest accomplishment is reaching my rank of Yonkyu (purple belt) in the 8 years that I have taken part in Aikido.

I joined GHOP to make some money over my winter break. I unintentionally got too interested in a task and went off on a tangent. Now, I'm enjoying my contribution to the open source community not as a GHOP contestant, but a FOSS enthusiast and coder. I chose Joomla! because I have prior experience with it - and the Mootools Javascript framework. Software that I had prior experience with seemed easier and more fitting to contribute to, rather than having to re-learn the core code.

My experiences with GHOP as well as the Joomla! community in general during the Doc Camp have been nothing but wonderful. The single task that I worked on (Making Joomla! more kid-friendly) was given a four-week time limit; however, I was given another month to work on the task after making additional extensions and additions in relation to the task's goal. The sheer amount of people eager and willing to help is outstanding for any Open Source community. The mentors were very responsive, even under the intense pressure and hundreds of tasks pushed upon them. The Joomla! GHOP experience was unforgettable, and has definitely been a grand introduction to contributing to Open Source Software.

The only thing possible to make the experience better is tighter integration with Google's GHOP pages. The claiming of tasks and separation between the GHOP page and the Joomla! forums seemed odd at first. However, it worked out rather smoothly as GHOP progressed. The only other issue would be the uploading and submitting of files for the GHOP contest. At times, contestants were forced to upload files elsewhere due to the lack of space in Google's GHOP page.

Currently I go to the high school, direction informatics. Beside the Computer and programming I'm very intrested in snowboarding in the winter. In the summer I like to go with my bike.

I decided to join the contest, because I like programming and writing documentations. I'm using Joomla! for about a year. While looking at the joomla.org site I have seen the news about the ghopc and thought I could participate.

I have choosen Joomla! because I am already familiar with it, and so this task seemed the simplest for me.

The GHOP is a very good invention for scolars, which can't join SOC but would like to do something for big open source projects.

My name is Tomasz Dobrzyński, I am 18. On Joomla! forum I am known as depresz. I come from city of Piotrków Trybunalski, central Poland.

I am student of 2nd year in the one of the local High School. My interests are computers, especially programming; I love it. I decided to join contest because I always wanted to participate in some Open Source project, but I did not know how to start. GHOP gave me this opportunity.

I have chosen Joomla! project because I made up my mind that I will discover new horizons which provide Joomla!. I was so excited that I could help by development of Joomla! and in this same time, play, and learn new things. Now I can see, that it was right choise, because Joomla! Community is so wonderful.

I think that GHOP is very nice organized. I have a great time. What am I suppose next year? More coding tasks and this same awesome atmosphere ;)

My full name is Wickrama Arachchi Vithanage Hashani Maduwanthi Weerarathna, a girl, sixteen years old. Joomla! forum ID is hashani.

- the country and region you are from

I'm from Sri Lanka. The district I related is Colombo.

- a little bit about yourself and your interests

I'm Hashani, a girl, sixteen years old, l would like to learn information technology and work with global people and global tasks. Actually I know it is a nice to exchange my ideas with the friends from different countries. I'm interested in eastern music, playing music instruments, reading, cooking and gardening. And also I prefer to spend time with my family. One day I want to be a doctor and help people who live in my country.

Why you decided to join the contest and why you choose Joomla!

I got a basic idea about Opensource from one of my sister who worked with a project of Google Summer Of Code competition and I also wanted to involve with such things. I heard Joomla! and it was Better, Easy to use, Flexible. Also it has very lively support community. Then I chose joomla! task for my first GHOP task.

- some thoughts on your experience in GHOP

I learned lot of things like what is a CMS and how it will be used. Except that it was a great opportunity for me to improve my writing skills, communication skills as well. And more importantly I learned what is "working as part of a community".

- ideas on how we might make this better in the future

I would like to give my contribution further to the joomla! and have a great time with great

My name is Witchakorn Kamolpornwijit. My Joomla! ID is Chalet16. I am from Thailand, South-East Asia. I am studying in grade 8, Patumwan Demonstration School. I am interested in C, PHP and network administration. I wish to create new open source project in the future.

I decided to join the Google Highly Open Participation Contest because I would like to learn more about developing these popular open source software.

I appreciate Joomla! because it very useful for most of the people who interested in creating new website with not much knowledge about HTML or PHP. I think I would like to have experiences in PHP and practical open source project management.

I think my tasks would be practical for most of people. For example footnotes plug-in can be used in many websites or DTD XML installer files can be standardize for Joomla! project in the future.

I think you should give the participants clearer details about the purpose of the task. In my opinion I suggest you to provide more coding tasks in the future.

I'm a senior at the Mathematics and Science High School in Vidin. My educational profile has an emphasis on Computer Science. I'm interested in computers (obviously), sci-fi and fantasy, philosophy, literature and also music and dancing. I'm currently pursuing university education in the US.

I learned about GHOP on Digg and thank god, otherwise I might've missed the opportunity. I checked out the participating projects and I chose Joomla because I have experience in building/maintaining my high school's website and because I was secretly itching to code some more.

Being a part of GHOP and the J! community has been really fun, no complaints whatsoever, although I feel the participating Joomla folks have been a bit (and that's an understatement) overworked and perhaps next year things would move faster and smoother if there are more J! volunteers.

My name is Zach Kanzler, A.K.A. theY4Kman. I live in the United States, specifically in Florida. I'm a bit of a geek, so I love tech toys and other things. I love to program, well, anything!

I participated in GHOP because I was always intrigued by the Summer of Code. I've wanted to participate in it since I first learned about it. Alas, though, I couldn't. One day I was visiting Google Code to check on the Google APIs and noticed GHOP. After reading about it, I couldn't wait to get started. I looked through the participants, noting Apache, Joomla!, and Python. I viewed the tasks for each of them and found that Joomla! had the most and the ones that I was interested in.

Throughout my participation in GHOP, I was treated with nothing but help and friendliness. Everyone I met was so nice and I received much help from them all. The only thing I would want to change is to have more participants and more tasks!